


Brooding

by SenkoWakimarin



Series: GUNTP Bonus Material [3]
Category: Deadpool - All Media Types, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Brooding, Flirting, Idiots in Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-12 04:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20160496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Frank doesn't like having most people around when he's injured. Somehow, Wade's not most people.





	Brooding

**Author's Note:**

> More moody Quid Pro Quo supplemental. This would fit somewhere between part 6 (Good Graces) and part 7 (Make Good).

Pain is a funny thing. Empathy, sympathy too, the way you can lie and change the way someone sees a thing. 

There's a lot of pain in Frank's routine. Frank tells people it's nothing, he says he's had worse, he makes himself stony or focuses on something else he can call important, or in some cases, with certain people, he makes himself relax and laugh. Whatever act he has to put on, he keeps it up until his audience finally gives up or gets bored, and they leave. People who were concerned, who would twist his pain as a weakness, either to be watched after or exploited, let go of the idea quicker, they accept that the pain is manageable and that Frank is tough enough not to be bothered by it. 

It's easier, when people don't worry or think too much about his shit. Make himself into a person who is beyond hurt, who shrugs everything off, who's too tough to bother worrying about. It keeps people distant, keeps the number of people he has to make himself laugh and smile through his pain rare, because there's only a handful he cares about enough to pretend to be enjoying himself around.

Better that way, better not to have people waiting on him. If he has to work with people, let him be a weapon, someone they're grateful for when he's working, forgotten when unneeded. 

"Aw, you're brooding, huh?"

None of it works around Wilson. Frank assumes it's to do with Wilson being an annoying dipshit who keeps getting himself killed but can't manage to stay that way. Wilson's experienced enough of the injuries Frank's trying to play off as insignificant that even with the one's he doesn't has direct reference for, he knows exactly how full of shit Frank is when he says he's fine.

"How do you manage that, huh?" Wilson flops down beside Frank where he's sitting, dust puffing off his stupid suit with the force of his motion. Wilson is covered in ash and grime -- Frank's not much better, but Frank doesn't mind it on himself. The filth covers a good deal of the blood and masks where the body armor is torn. People don't ask about wounds they don't notice. "Nate does a great deal of brooding, all hours, anywhere -- leave him alone for five minutes, come back, he's staring off into the middle distance thinking broody thinky-thoughts, and he looks _ constipated_. Every time, every fucking time, I'm telling you."

Frank has a theory about Wilson's relationship with his own pain and his relationship with other people's pain. Wilson doesn't hardly ever shut up, but when he's in enough pain he gets tight-lipped and quiet. He gets angry, he gets venomous with the fake cheer and the graphic threats. Show him someone else in pain, he's all jokes, often at his own expense. Wilson talks through pain, makes noise, promises everyone around him he's not going to make anything easy by just shutting up and giving in to it. He babbles around injured people because they make him uncomfortable, and discomfort is like pain; pain means talk, so Wilson babbles.

It's a different kind of babble than his usual running commentary. Less dick jokes, more stories about horrible injuries he's lived through, spoken through a filter of humor instead of doing justice to the terrible sort of horror he must have felt at the time. Sometimes it's this, now, too; trying to draw Frank out of himself by talking shit. He's probing for a reaction, seeing how bad things are by how quick Frank comes back growling.

"Ooh, like major O5 level brooding, huh? Still doing it while I talk to you?"

Huffing, Frank squints at him. Wilson's yanked his mask off, which means he and Cable have almost certainly finished the sweep and there's no enemies left. Cable will be busy with the tech for a while before Wade and Frank have to do anything, and even then it's just hauling ass. 

"You trying to tell me I look constipated, Wilson?" Frank growls, brows up, fingers tight on his gun. 

He's surprised when Wade laughs. "That's the thing, bonehead, you _ don’t_!" Wade says happily. "You're the only person I know who makes brooding look one hundred percent natural. Do you lay awake after a good fuck and brood at the ceiling while whoever falls asleep?"

Frank makes a noise, surprising himself by how genuinely amused he sounds. "Stay awake longer and you'd find out."

Ugly as Wade is, watching his face is... enjoyable in a way, for Frank at least. He's an incredibly expressive man, and Frank thinks sometimes there's a hint of what he might have looked like before whatever the fuck happened to make him look the way he does. He's got the structure, in his bones and the draw of his skin, to have been a handsome guy once. Too lean and too much of a clown to have ever been Frank's type, but the kind who wouldn't have to wonder if he'd go home alone if he didn't want. 

Watching him gasp in mock scandal, hand pressed to his chest and brows together, Frank can see those shadows, the shade of who Wilson might have been before, providing he was as crazy then as he is now. 

"Oh, Mister Castle," Wade drawls, putting on the affectation of a southern lady, poorly shamming offence at some forward proposal she's keen to agree to. "Was that an invitation?"

Laughing would hurt. Frank almost does it anyway, because the clown act does tickle sometimes and because that's what he's used to doing, with the people he's not trying to chase off. Laugh through the pain until they stop paying attention, laugh and smile and play at it being easy until they go off to their own lives again, and then he can be honest with himself about what kind of pain he's dealing with and how best to deal with it.

"Not for tonight," Frank says, groaning as he leans back against the concrete half-wall behind them, leveraging himself to stretch his legs out proper in front of himself. "Pretty sure I cracked a couple ribs back there."

Wade nods. "Always a fun one. I'd suggest heroine to get you through the next few weeks of sneeze-agony, but you're a square and also susceptible to addiction, so that's probably a no-no."

"Yeah," Frank agrees, closing his eyes and relaxing his hands to lower the gun to his lap, ready in a second if need be but no longer looking it. "That'd be a no-no."

"Tell you what, I'll give you the best blow job of your life the next time you think your ribs are up to all that gaspy moany shit you get to when I'm doing my best work."

"That supposed to sound special?" Frank asks, popping one eyebrow up without opening his eyes. "You think I don't know you're gonna be drooling for it by then? You're always better when you've had to wait."

He listens to Wade clap his gloved hands together and bounce in place, his ridiculous suit creaking with each motion. "When did _ you _get all playful?"

Frank knows Wade well enough by this point. He knows Wade's still looking, still assessing, still judging. But Wade's not like other people, who try to tell him to hold back, to be more careful, to stop doing what he does to spare himself injury. Wade commiserates and moves on. He's never tried to baby Frank when Frank is injured in the middle of a job, never tried to stop him from fighting while hurt. He _has_ stepped up his own effort, gone at the enemy harder, with more focus, than his usual giddy ferocity. 

Wade doesn't see injuries as a deterrent, and he recognizes the same sentiment in Frank. A sort of stubborn like calling to like, both of them too determined to see what they've set themselves to do get done to hold back just because something hurts. Frank figures he's the sort to cut his own arm off if it's the only way to move forward, and he knows from experience Wade is too. 

"Sometime you weren't watchin'," Frank says, and he smiles as Wade launches into a delighted tirade about the character archetypes Frank's braking and all the fanboys he's disappointing. Standard fare, which makes it much more palatable to listen to than what just about anyone else seeing him like this.

Because pain is a funny thing, and so is sympathy. The way the wrong kind of sympathy cuts like a knife to some people, the way pain can be put on hold to mitigate another person's sympathy. Everything with Wade is always topsy-turvy to Frank, the way he worms himself in and makes himself not just wanted but safe to have around. 


End file.
